Leaving Paradise Review

Leaving Paradise By Simone Elkeles

A year ago Caleb was drunk and hit his sisters best friend Maggie, in a hit and run accident. Now a year after Caleb is up for and early realese from juvenile jail. But he has to act nice and do community service. But when he comes out everything has changed, including himself. His family is acting like strangers to each other, everybody in town is against him, his girlfriend is together with his best friends and his friends aren´t even his friends anymore. All because he was in jail.
Then there is Maggie the girl he hit, even after months of painful physical therapy, Maggie walks with a limp and has scares. She doesn´t have it easy eigther. She has lost her friends, tennis and everybody calls her a freak because of the way she walks. Now they are two outsiders and the only on that can understand what they are going through is each other. Slowly Maggie starts to trust Caleb again after they begins working at the same lady. And they eventually begins a relationship. But Caleb is hiding a lot of things and Maggie soon finds out what really happened the night of the accident

I really liked this book. It is easy to understand, has no hard words and it is really fast to read. The book is not a typical happily ever after story, not even in the end and i like that, (Well as long as there is a sequel. else it is just sad) I was just an amazing and beautiful story. And Caleb what a wonderful character, he goes through all this crap for his sister. I will admit that i thought it was Kendra who did it, so i was kind of shocked when we fund out it was Leah. I know that she has changed and all that, but i thought it was because his brother whent to jail, not because she did it.
I was really sad with the ending and almost got mad with the whole book, until I a minute after fund out that there is going to be a sequel and it is coming out in a couple of months. A thing i fund a little weird is the first real time they are alone together, despite their worries and fears and hesitations, they just suddenly seemed to click and everything was alright. Things went back to being hard, then all of a sudden were good again, it was very on and off with little explanation for it. The book as written from both Maggie and Caleb´s point of view.
I am totally going to read the sequel and are really looking forward and hoping that Maggie and Caleb will end up together, because it is totally cruel to leave us with that ending.
This is a really strong book that deals with some though stuff. The book also have another cover.

Grade: 12